Community is that state in which
everyone's attention is focused in common, in collective awareness.
The object of attention...but that only describes a feeding frenzy.
The focus of Community attention is not an object.
It is Awareness: living, ephemeral, fluid, emergent, immersive, relational, reverberative, momentary.
Shared consciousness.
Collective experience.
A common reality.
The normal condition for herds, packs, pods, prides, schools, flocks, troupes, and tribes.
The social function of dancing, song, adornment, imagery, and eventually, language.
The practice and experience of Community is
the source and medium of society.
aka, Love.
But in "A world in which each individual is cut off...
Only the power of value, invested in the monetary object,
allows the existence of a social life...
It reunites separated individuals
by building for them a common horizon, the desire for money,
and a common language, that of accounts."*
With the advent of this Basic Cultural Structure
a crude substitute for Natural Law
of property, promises, and profits,
everything was quickly named, measured, quantified, and evaluated.
To compensate for this terrible loss and disorientation we must evaluate everything with money.
To navigate this artificial terrain, we have accounting.
The vital necessity of Relationship is still available
but no longer necessary
and only for rent.
What became of Community then?
When "Only the power of value...allows the existence of a social life"?
Nothing could be spoken of, listened-for, even perceptible,
except in terms of transactions in,
or seen as,
measurable in time and distance.
Dignity was the first to go.
And now, Attention itself is on the block.
Everyone's Attention is the ultimate prize.
To be the ultimate object of that object
is the Golden Ring on this merry-go-round.
The direct route to obtaining that object is mind-numbing terror.
*Andre Orlean (paraphrased translation by Howard Richards), L'Empire de la valeur : Refonder l'economie. Paris: Seuil, 2011.
